On January 22nd, Gregory Alan Elliott was found innocent of criminal harassment after a prolonged two-way disagreement with two politically connected social justice warriors. There were originally three complainants but the third, who had a working relationship with the Toronto Police Service’s social media team, was mysteriously withdrawn from the case just moments before she was scheduled to testify.

Elliott lost his job, his reputation was smeared by a gang of journalists closely related to the complainants, he fell deep into debt, and was forced to to cash-in a lifetime of savings he’d built up in his pension. Sadly, the injustice against Elliott continued long after he was found innocent. The smears continued in the media, including shameful coverage by the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star & NewsTalk 1010, and a shameful and defaming radio broadcast by an anti-bullying advocate. The complainant’s friends continue to gaslight and smear Elliott online to this day.

Unfortunately, despite having been found not guilty, Elliott’s reputation was further damaged by a mistake in the court’s final ruling- mistakenly attributing a homophobic tweet made by a Twitter account created to impersonate him. A hearing was held yesterday for the judge to correct the error. The results opened up new questions about the credibility of Ontario’s justice system- and Canada’s most widely read newspaper.

What Happened In Court?

Evidence of Criminal Mischief?

Many people perceive judges by the pompous, out of touch, moody, and arrogant stereotypes they see on TV. Judge Brent Knazan comes across as the exact opposite, a friendly and tolerant human being who drops his ego when he enters the court. In the two years I’ve watched him during Elliott’s trial he came across as friendly and fair.

It took only a few minutes after the start of the hearing for Knazan to share his mea culpa. He made no effort to cover himself or shift away the blame and stated very clearly that he agreed with the defence’s claim- his statement attributing a homophobic tweet to Gregory Alan Elliott was a tragic mistake.

Elliott’s defence responded by requesting that the judge makes an addendum to his final ruling. He explained how the court’s error was echoed in newspapers around the world and read out some of the quotes from stories published after the judge’s not guilty ruling. After reading out a quote from Desmond Cole’s story in the Toronto Star, he pointed out the writer’s ad-hominem attack- comparing Elliott’s charges to the story of a man who murdered a woman.

The defence was incredibly apologetic towards the judge, one can imagine how nerve-wracking it must have been for a lawyer who’d likely stand before the judge in the future. At one point Knazan responded saying “you don’t have to defend me, thank you, but I have all kinds of protections”. But despite the judge’s kind reassurance, the defence continued to tread gently and speak with the utmost respect.

Despite how obvious and damaging the mistake was, the Crown still felt the need to provide some resistance. She explained that how “it could open up the floodgates to problems in future cases” if the judge made an addendum after the trial had already been decided.

“This is not about guilt or innocence, but clearly is only about Elliott’s reputation,” stated Crown attorney Marni Goldenberg (as if she hadn’t done enough damage taking him to trial with an embarrassingly weak case). After claiming that she’s “not trying to deny” Elliott’s right to have the mistake fixed, she jumped into case law with an argument against making a correction.

The Judge explained how he hadn’t originally seen the homophobic tweet, saying it was hidden away on the spreadsheet created by the software used to collect the evidence. He finally noticed it after he “expanded” the spreadsheet’s tables. He mistakenly believed the tweet was Elliott’s because the fake account it was posted from used the same picture as Elliott’s account.

The Crown and police’s decision to gather evidence using Sysomos’ software was a massive mistake that reeks of malpractice and incompetence. The software was only able to collect tweets from unlocked accounts, and was unable to collect tweets that already been deleted. It’s a bad joke to imply this was a valid way to collect evidence. They only valid way to have collected the evidence would have been to subpoena it from Twitter. The big question we must ask is why didn’t they bother to do this?

The most eye-opening moment of Friday’s hearing was then the judge speculated that the person who created the impersonation account might have committed a crime. This could be seen as criminal mischief,” claimed the judge. Elliott’s defence agreed, claiming that “there certainly is evidence of mischief by the person who created the parody accounts.”

It’s important to note that complainant Stephanie Guthrie’s Twitter account @amirightfolks was included in the tweet, and another person in the thread stated very clearly it came from a fake account. Guthrie was in the courtroom when the judge read it out in his final ruling, she made no effort to contact the court and notify the judge of the mistake. This is similar to the situation where Guthrie admitted on the stand that she knew that allegations that Elliott was a “pedophile” were inaccurate, but neglected to disclose this information to the police because she didn’t want to help him.

After a short recess, the judge came back to read out his statement expressing that he’d made a mistake attributing the homophobic tweet to Gregory Alan Elliott. He agreed there was a need to make an addendum to his final ruling, the Crown and defence agreed there was no need to come back later in the day to hear him read it.

Toronto Star Plays Dirty

Desmond Cole plays dirty

It only took a few days after Elliott was arrested for Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias to write a dirty ad-hominem attack. Zerbisias’ story was the main reason I was interested in the case. She was very angry after I wrote a story criticising her for glorifying an unrepentant ringleader of violence at the 2010 G20 as a brave jailhouse activist fighting for the rights of fellow prisoners. Shortly after I published my story she responded publicly threatening to include me in her smear against Elliott.

Zerbisias’ story about Elliott’s arrest kicked-off talking about the heinous case of bullying that helped drove Amanda Todd to commit suicide. Besides her shameless use of ad-hominems; Zerbisias neglected to disclose her relationship with Stephanie Guthrie, her anger with Elliott for calling out her dishonesty and incompetence over Twitter, and the fact the Star had previously published an article by Stephanie Guthrie attacking former mayor Rob Ford.

History repeated itself a few days after Elliott’s not guilty ruling when Desmond Cole responded to the judgement with another ad-hominem attack- this time kicking-off with the story about a murderer. Cole’s story made a serious mistake claiming that the judge accused Elliott’s of making “misogynistic” tweets. This never happened.

Bad faith at the Toronto Star

Elliott’s lawyer contacted the Star and requested they make a correction- it took them a few days to do so, long after most people would have read it. But when they finally made the correction, despite the fact it was widely known the judge had made a mistake, the Star demonstrated what many view as bad faith- replacing the word “misogynistic” with “homophobic”.

Star writer Dan Taekema was the only other journalist who showed up to Friday’s hearing. I took the opportunity during the recess to make him aware that Cole’s story wasn’t the only to use nasty ad hominem smears. I politely explained how I enjoy much of the Star’s content, but articles like Zerbisas and Cole’s take a real hit on the newspaper’s credibility. He asked if I’d like to be interviewed but I politely declined- explaining that I’m not judging him as an individual, but I can no longer trust the Toronto Star to do the right thing.

Taekema’s story was published later that day. The good news is that, unlike his colleagues, his report avoided using ad hominems and only stuck to the facts. The bad news is that Desmond Cole’s hit piece hasn’t been changed to notify readers the judge mistakenly accused him of making homophobic tweets.

Unfortunately, Cole’s story was more widely shared and ranks higher in Google’s search engine than the Taekema’s. This means it’s entirely likely that people Googling for stories about Elliott’s trial will never find out that there was a correction. Considering this, and the fact the Star neglected to disclose to their readers that Cole has a working relationship with two of Elliott’s complainants- it seems very clear that the Toronto Star cannot be trusted.

Closing Thoughts

After watching this trial from start-to-finish, digging deep into the evidence, understanding the behaviour of the complainants and their friends, and learning how deeply connected they were with the Toronto Police- I’m left with deep concerns about the state of Ontario’s justice system.

I’m deeply concerned that the real victim of criminal harassment was Gregory Alan Elliott. Guthrie took it upon herself to create real life consequences for Elliott- spending months smearing him online as a “misogynist” and going as far as to misrepresent the truth to the police about allegations Elliott was a “paedophile”.

The judge’s statement on Friday about his concerns the person using the fake account comitted criminal mischief only helped to solidify my concerns. The account was clearly created to trick people into thinking it was Elliott’s, it was filled with vile language and disturbing images. If not an example of criminal harassment, perhaps it was criminal defamation?

Elliott’s lawyer told the Toronto Star on Friday that if the Toronto Police are serious about combatting online harassment it’s imperative they start an investigation into who created the fake account. Continuing their pattern of dirty reporting, the Star neglected to include this important statement in their story.

I sincerely hope that Elliott takes the time to walk into a police station and demand they start an investigation. His life was torn apart by this case and the police demonstrated gross incompetence in handling the evidence. They owe it to him, and to the public at large, to treat this incident with as much urgency as they did the accusations made by his accusers. The credibility of Ontario’s justice system is at-risk, their refusal to investigate would be a tragic mistake.

As for the Toronto Star, they owe it to Elliott – and to the credibility of their staff and contributors – to note the correction in Desmond Cole’s story. Elliott’s case is a shameful part of their history, the newspaper experienced serious losses last year- if they continue this sort behaviour, they won’t deserve any tears if they’re eventually forced to shut down.

11 comments

Great article Greg. I , along with many other reasonable minded people are glad to see good HONEST reporting of what REALLY took place and by whom . It is also very clear that the star , desmond cole and zerbisias are not interested in reporting truth, simply they want to sensationalize stories to skew them towards THEIR own radical left wing agendas. Cole might be the biggest scum bag of them all . He is nothing , in my opinion, but a race baiter who wants a race war and will attach any white male that stands between him and his radical ideas .

Cole seems to cry a lot of wolf, but has yet to offer up even one shred of evidence to support even one of his claims . Personally , I would love to see his sorry ass brought up in court by some one suing him for defamation.

Thanks for bringing this very important case to light and for your honest and fair coverage of this case.

Why aren’t the three women being prosecuted for spreading false allegations about this man? To accuse somebody of pedophilia and homophobia, then neglect to correct the police or the court, when they *knew* the truth… it’s mind-boggling.

No really, because homophobia (however one defines it) is a belief, it is not a criminal act. However pedophilia is widely viewed as criminally repugnant behavior, the allegation of one being a pedophile or child molester can literally ruin someone’s life and cause them to be subjected to physical violence. From what I understand it is now a criminal act in the U.S to create a false account to impersonate someone else’s identity in order to defame them, which reminded me of this case, perhaps Canadian law should keep up with the times?

Interesting to note that the offending tweets from the fake account @greg_a_elliot are no longer viewable. I wonder when they were deleted? I’m sure it is some point in the last few months, any way to find out?

I am glad that the Judge took responsibility for HIS mistake. Did he offer an apology to GAE which common decency would dictate? He created a horrible smear against GAE – a smear that cannot be completely erased by his amended decision. The damage has already been done. Did the judge offer to pay the legal bill for Defense attorney’s Murray’s final appearance before the judge or will GAE be stuck with the legal bill for clearing his name against these false accusations introduced by the judge?

How despicable that Crown attorney Marnie Goldenberg would object to correcting the record. She must be a disgusting person.

I find it VERY strange that the Defense Attorney was apologetic towards the judge. Why? The judge made the TERRIBLE mistake which caused his client to be horribly smeared (forever)!! I understand that Murray will have future cases adjudicated by this judge but this fact should not have caused him to grovel in front of the judge. The only trials that I have seen are televised American trials and I have never seen American defense attorney’s grovel in front of judges. Of course they show proper respect to the judge but never grovel. It seems in this case Murray was overly obsequious towards the judge and if this is how he normally addresses judges I wonder if this is the reason why this ridiculous trial stretched on for over three years OR for that matter why it wasn’t thrown out in the early stages? In the end Murray got a good result – an acquittal – but there was no way GAE was ever going to convicted based on the evidence provided. The charges should have been thrown out long ago during the discovery phase.

I agree that GAE should insist that Police investigate the fake twitter account. You can be sure that Twitter is able to attach an IP address to the fake account and if they are willing to comply with a court order – Police should be able to identify who was behind the tweet. Could very well have been one of the complainants!!

If I was GAE I would also approach police – or justice of the peace – and request that perjury charges be laid against Heather Reilly. According to the defense closing arguments – Reilly lied under oath about changing her twitter avatar (she claimed she changed it because she was afraid of GAE – evidence was presented she changed avatar BEFORE she ever exchanged tweets with GAE – she had lied under oath!!). I am not familiar with all of the evidence but if there is evidence that Guthrie lied under oath she should be charged with perjury also!! It is really important that GAE drives these criminal charges because we can be sure that the corrupt Toronto Police are not going to lay charges against these women.

If I was GAE I would try to enlist the support of the person who wrote the letter to the judge alleging a widespread conspiracy on the part of the complainants. If this person is willing to reiterate his charges under oath it seems to me that this should be good enough to lay criminal charges against the complainants. There may not be enough evidence to finally convict but at least these women can experience a few years of hell before the courts.

After watching this trial for years I’ve started to wonder how serious ANYONE is who goes around hunting down and protesting *rape culture*, like they’re Don Quixote chasing windmills, EXCEPT when it comes to Shariah Law(an *actual rape culture* where rape is a punishment -not a crime) and what happens in men’s prisons. If they’re not protesting those actual rape cultures then they’re full of it. What a vile waste of the power and connections these inActivists clearly have that could actually make a difference.

“As for the Toronto Star, they owe it to Elliott – and to the credibility of their staff and contributors – to note the correction in Desmond Cole’s story. Elliott’s case is a shameful part of their history, the newspaper experienced serious losses last year- if they continue this sort behaviour, they won’t deserve any tears if they’re eventually forced to shut down.”

This is some of the best news I have read in some time, that newspaper has more or less hit bottom in the past decade sinking to vile levels of trash journalism that the National Enquirer would not stoop to. Perhaps many of the Red Star’s subscribers and sponsors are voting with their wallets and taking their business elsewhere, why any self respecting business would advertise in the Red Star is beyond me. The Globe and Mail had better knock it off with the fanboy stuff in fawning over Justin “Fop” Trudeau or they may end up joining them on the road to financial ruin, for starters put Jeffrey Simpson out to pasture.